Title

Author

Date

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Science

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Adviser

Chew, Meng-Sang

Abstract

The human mind is very imprecise and uncertain most of the time. We are allowed to think as we wish, as things really are. This, however, is not how computers are designed to allow us to solve realistic problems. Now the question arises: how do we represent uncertainty and impreciseness using very accurate devices? In order to add flexibility into mechanical design, fuzzy logic can be used to represent the imprecise data, such as how humans think. Fuzzy logic allows the use of representing more than one value for a specific variable; it also allows the user to specify the shape the data takes (the membership function) which could be a function of the problem at hand. While incorporating fuzzy logic into design, the design becomes more imprecise in the sense that its variables represent more than one value, yet the design becomes more accurate when considering how the human brain interprets these variables.